August 30 - September 6, 1999
from the Up-To-Date dept
Hotmail holes, the tagline contest (still going!), Office applications on the web (both real and vapor), as well as the usual crew of mergers, quotes, and simple silliness. Click below for this week's Up-To-Date newsletter...********************************************************************* UP-TO-DATE ********************************************************************* The not always serious, not always weekly update on the High-Tech Industry August 30th - September 6th, 1999 ********************************************************************* Reading all your Hotmail accounts for fun and for profit --------------------- Techdirt on the Web --------------------- The Techdirt tagline (or as someone suggested, perhaps it should be an "anti" tagline) contest is still going. Details at: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/990830/0247212_F.shtml This week's Techdirt Poll: If the Hotmail hole that gave everyone access to anyone's Hotmail email account were still open, whose email would you read first? https://www.techdirt.com/pollBooth.pl?qid=eh The latest and greatest, Friends of the Revolution column (guest written) all about buying from websites you don't know about: https://www.techdirt.com/features/990903/1938257_F.shtml And, as always, there's plenty more stuff at https://www.techdirt.com/ updated most every weekday. -------------------- Say that again... -------------------- "Game shows are the killer app of interactive television." - Andy Kaplan, Columbia TriStar Television Group, executive VP. This assumes that folks want interactive TV in the first place... something that's never really been proven. "There are no great places for guys on the Web." - Steven Kotok, Maxim Magazine. "We are going to do fewer things very well." - Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Pres. Okay, okay, this one depends on how you parse it, but it's got potential to be very funny. ------------------------------------------ Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like ------------------------------------------ No IPOs? Wow... Ancestry.com raised over $30 million to be a "me too" site... eMachines files to go public, and all of a sudden the press doesn't think too highly of them... Iridium's CFO quits (not really much for him to do, eh?)... iVillage buys up FamilyPoint.com... Intel buys NetBoost for its networking business... Global Crossing trying to salvage merger with Frontier... ICO Global files for Chapter 11 (showing solidarity with Iridium?)... More execs and directors at drkoop.com should have read the insider trading rules a little more carefully... ------------------------------------------------ Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week... ------------------------------------------------ Okay, folks, where were my rumors this week? Very slow. I guess everyone in the rumor business was on vacation... Nortel to buy Newbridge... Viacom and CBS to merge?... ---------------------------------------- News you should have read elsewhere ---------------------------------------- Well, I hope all you little devious folks out there had enough time Monday morning to read all your friends, enemies, and relatives' Hotmail accounts, as it seems we all had a good many hours when the system was open for all... Sun finally got around to announcing that they really (now, seriously) were buying Star Division, and everyone went crazy about it... IBM and Cisco and lots and lots of money... Okay, so Apple unveiled the Power Mac G4 and, yeah, sure, it's nice and everything, but it's not like it's solving world hunger or anything. Would you folks get over it already? It's just another nice machine, but it ain't as great as all the slobber it seems to be getting... Yes, yes, we know that Rick Belluzzo is going to Microsoft, but no one has explained exactly *why* just yet... Microsoft's "back door" for the NSA (no, no, really, that's not what it really is)... -------------------------- News you could do without -------------------------- Mir is now empty and its last crew warns that there's a fairly good chance the damn thing will spin out of control now (as if it never did before)... eBay launches auto section... Ziff-Davis apparently can't find anyone to buy them outright and is going for the sell off the pieces method, starting with their market research group, which is going to Harte-Hanks... eBay creates a site for AOL'ers who are too stupid to just go to eBay... Oracle loses yet another vice president to a startup (just how many VPs do they have there anyway?)... What is it with you Brits? Now the BBC is giving away free internet access... Presidential campaign web sites not up to speed on privacy policies... Mindspring to spend $50 million on advertising campaign "You'd be happier using Mindspring" (they can't really be serious, can they?)... Fortune's young rich list chock full of internet folks... Steve Ballmer apparently can't pass up the chance to pitch vapor ware, and claims that Microsoft will come out with web based copies of Office in response to Sun's Star Division purchase... MCI admits that maybe (just maybe?) they handled last months network outage poorly... ------------ Surprises: ------------ Microsoft plans to relaunch MSN in Europe (oh, now there's a winning idea)... Andersen Consulting is going to launch an upscale portal site (yes, this makes no sense whatsoever - but those Andersen folks are supposed to be really really smart, according to their advertisements)... What sort of idiotic company would try to charge for instant messaging software when AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and others have been giving away theirs for free? Apparently Abbott Systems thinks there really are a bunch of suckers out there... Express Scripts basically bought into PlanetRX.com this week, and gave up their own online pharmacy plans (this is a pretty big deal, but most folks seemed to have missed that)... ------------------------------- (Mis)Uses of Technology: ------------------------------- Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy to take part in interactive TV trials through WebTV (don't get me started)... Slate TV... eBay kidney auction (did anyone believe that damn thing was real in the first place, besides the gullible press?)... PrivacyX being about as secure as Hotmail on a good day... An ISP pissed off that one of its customers isn't paying the bills, points their domain to a porn site... You can now pay Macy's for some software to create a 3D electronic model of yourself and see how you might look in clothes. Ah, paying them so they can make you buy more - that makes sense... PeopleSoft for Palm devices... ---------- Studies: ---------- According to Zona, more and more corporate web sites are now the responsibility of the marketing department over the information technology department... The folks over at Jupiter tested the response rates to customer service requests at online brokerages and found that most have a terrible time actually responding (they're all too busy day trading, apparently)... Harris Interactive jumps into the game (welcome!) and predicts over $9 billion in online purchases this holiday season... This is a surprise? Most software sold at online auctions is pirated... ----------- Overhype ----------- So much talk this week of electronic books, and the one conclusion: no one really likes them... When is the birthday of the internet and does anyone really (no, really!) care?... eCompanies gets a ton of money from good old friends (hey, folks, don't you get it? It's just another internet incubator)... Priceline Mortgages... Have we all been worrying too much about Y2K when we should be worrying about 9-9-99? I guess we find out this week if civilization ends... Quixtar, Amway, and simply having no clue about the web... -------------- Predictions: -------------- The phone call price war is just beginning. AT&T announced their 7 cents a minute, 24 hours a day plan, and just a few days later IDT comes back with a 5 cents a minute, 24 hours a day plan. I like this sort of thing... FatBrain's eMatter concept of letting folks publish their own writings, and thinking it'll do for authors what MP3 did for musicians is ridiculous. The web already lets anyone publish, folks. They didn't need FatBrain to help them with that... ------------------------ Too much free time: ------------------------ It scares me more than a little bit to know that someone has put so much time and effort into writing up the rules of "Shotgun", and even purchasing the domain for it: http://www.theshotgunrules.com/ ********************************************************************* Up To Date is written by Mike Masnick from whatever news he hears from whatever sources they happen to come from. It is not intended for any uses other than as one of many possible ways to follow what's going on in the hi-tech industry. I certainly wouldn't rely on it as your only source of info. And, of course, my comments may not accurately reflect reality. Finally, an explicit warning about investing: I do not, under any circumstance, consider any piece of information in this newsletter "investment advice" and neither should you. If you would like to subscribe to the email version please send an email to utd-sub@techdirt.com with "Subscribe Up-To-Date" in the subject heading. Up To Date is also available on the web at https://www.techdirt.com/uptodate/ If you want more in depth, daily up dates, along with your own commentary head over to https://www.techdirt.com/ Comments are always welcome! Email: feedback@techdirt.com *********************************************************************
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
